taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

I’ve been running into problems recently (since several months ago at least), with USB hardware on my Thinkpad T40 running Ubuntu Hoary Dapper; in particular, every time I plug in my iPod or one of my USB hard disks nowadays, I get this:

[5008549.187000] usb 4-3: USB disconnect, address 14
[5008550.143000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 18
[5008552.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 27
[5008557.393000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 43
[5008557.893000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 44
[5008558.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 46
[5008558.895000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: port 3 reset error -110
[5008558.896000] hub 4-0:1.0: hub_port_status failed (err = -32)
[5008559.893000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 48
[5008562.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 58
[5008563.143000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 59
[5008563.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 60
[5008570.143000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 85

This repeats ad infinitum until the USB device is disconnected.

I had this down as a hardware issue (since it started happening just after warranty expiration ;), but some accidental googling revealed several other cases – and a workaround:

sudo modprobe -r ehci-hcd

Run that repeatedly, each time replugging the device and monitoring dmesg via watch -n 1 ‘dmesg | tail’ in a window, until the device is finally recognised as a USB hard disk. It generally seems to take 3 or 4 attempts, in my experience.

This LKML thread suggests hardware changes can cause it, but this hardware hasn’t changed in years. Annoying.

Anyway, this is ongoing. This tip seems to help, but it might be just treating a symptom, I don’t know — just posting for google and posterity… and to moan, of course :(

Tags: bugs, disks, ehci-hcd, hardware, ipod, linux, storage, usb

I’ve realised I like the endings of songs; whether I like a song or not, entirely depends on how it ends.

Apple’s iPod shuffle algorithm is incredible. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time listening to it, and I’m sure it’s not random; I think it’s picking next tracks based partly on the similarity of metadata between the current and candidate tracks, which is quite neat as an automated mixing technique.

So is it random? Google says:

• yes
• no; a commenter on that article notes the same thing I’m talking about
• yes
• no; can’t say I’ve noticed the Beatles getting a push on mine
• yes
• and finally, no answer here, but a pretty cool stats experiment

Tags: apple, ipod, mp3, music, randomness, shuffle

shiny do-dad
Originally uploaded by goopymart.

Tags: ipod, jmason, jpg, yep

BoingBoing with a cautionary tale. When you buy a HipTop Sidekick from T-Mobile, you’re not really buying it in the way you’d imagine — instead, you get to hold it while they operate the software, as far as I can see. As of this week, T-Mobile are going to remotely erase the games that were included with the device, because they are ‘no longer supporting’ them. And tough luck to Sidekick owners.

As BB sez:

Who owns your Sidekick? T-Mobile does, apparently, even if you spent full retail on it (I dropped 250 dollars on mine). You need T-Mobile’s permission to install software on their device. T-Mobile will, from time to time, decide to erase software from your device. And when you stop subscribing to their service, T-Mobile will delete all your data forever, without giving you any mechanism for moving it off the device (and without giving you the ability to design a tool that would let you do this).

I don’t really get it — I mean, this is the reason Palm platforms won in the handheld arena for so long; the user’s control over what they can install, the developer’s freedom to write new apps for the users to install, and the (comparatively) open aspects of their SDK and protocols so that it can be sync’d to by lots of desktop apps.

Competing with all the other PDAs, based on hardware or UI alone, isn’t enough — unless you’re Apple with the iPod. Surely the Sidekick OS developers get this? (Maybe what happened is the OS developers get it – but T-Mobile don’t.)

Talking of the iPod — Gary Robinson notes that Pixo, the vendor of the OS software used on Apple’s iPods has just been bought — by Sun. It seems Pixo nowadays sells server-side Java thingies, which seems wierd for a developer of OSes for handheld platforms — until you read this article from January 2002, which reports that Apple and Pixo were at loggerheads anyway, due to contractual difficulties, and that Pixo had given up on embedded-OS work, due to a shortage of clients.

Anyway, I wonder if Apple got a licensing deal that gave them the source and allows them to update the Pixo OS themselves, if Sun decide to drop that product. (Given that Pixo themselves turned around and set the company in a totally oblique direction, I’d reckon it’s likely.)

Spam: Rod says the National Do Not Call Registry has launched. Sign up here — but wait a while first, it’s massively overloaded right now…

Tags: boingboing, developer, device, hiptop, ipod, obile, sidekick, software, tale, time

Wired: The Civil War Inside Sony.

By rights, Sony should own the portable player business. The company’s first hit product, back in the ’50s, was the transistor radio, the tinny-sounding invention that took rock and roll out of the house and away from the parents and allowed the whole Elvis thing to happen. A quarter-century later, the Walkman enabled the kids of the ’70s to take their tapes and tune out the world. But the 21st-century Walkman doesn’t bother with tapes or CDs or minidiscs; it stores hundreds of hours of music on its own hard drive. And it sports an Apple logo. ….

Where the iPod simply lets you sync its contents with the music collection on your personal computer, Walkman users are hamstrung by laborious ‘check-in/check-out’ procedures designed to block illicit file-sharing. And a Walkman with a hard drive? Not likely, since Sony’s copy-protection mechanisms don’t allow music to be transferred from one hard drive to another - not an issue with the iPod. ‘We do not have any plans for such a product,’ says Kimura, the smile fading. ‘But we are studying it.’ ….

What’s changed since the original Walkman debuted is that Sony became the only conglomerate to be in both consumer electronics and entertainment. As a result, it’s conflicted: Sony’s electronics side needs to let customers move files around effortlessly, but its entertainment side wants to build in restraints, because it sees every customer as a potential thief.

Tags: civil, drive, entertainment, ipod, music, product, sony, the, walkman, wired